Atmel Delivers Industry's Lowest Power Wireless MCU for 2.4GHz ISM Band Applications

MUNICH, Nov. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Electronica 2012 -- Atmel^® Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML), a leader in microcontroller and touch technology solutions, today announced the Atmel ATmegaRFR2 AVR^® family of devices, its next-generation ultra-low power single-chip wireless solution for the 2.4GHz industrial, scientific, medical band (ISM) applications worldwide.

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Expanding on Atmel's existing ATmega128RFA1, the new family consists of several devices including the ATmega64RFR2, ATmega128RFR2 and ATmega256RFR2 with new memory derivatives, offering a smaller 64K to a larger 256K device.

The ATmegaRFR2 family integrates a number of industry-leading features including the lowest power using advanced hardware assist, best-in-class RF performance and additional memory options to meet today's demanding wireless requirements. Delivering <6mA in listen mode, <14.5mA in transmit mode and <1.5uA in deep sleep mode, the new single-chip wireless family offers up to 50 percent lower power consumption than existing offerings on the market today including the lowest power budget solution for today's 2.4GHz wireless applications. The new family also offers a true 1.8V operation at 16MHz and a wider temperature range, up to 125°C, for deployments in more demanding environments such as wireless lighting control.

To further simplify and accelerate a wireless design, a Wireless Composer is also available through the Atmel Studio 6 Gallery, the company's new app store featuring a growing selection of extensions and plug-ins. The Wireless Composer provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for RF performance measurements while running the ATmegaRFR2 evaluation kit. More information about the composer is available at: www.atmel.com/studio.

Atmel's ATmegaRFR2 family can be used with proprietary communication stacks and solutions compliant to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Atmel has already obtained 'golden units status' with the ZigBee Alliance for its new ZigBee Light Link reference implementation. The new family is also ideal for other ZigBee PRO-compliant wireless networks running the ZigBee Home Automation (ZHA), ZigBee Building Automation (ZBA), or ZigBee Smart Energy (ZSE). The Atmel ZigBee PRO and ZigBee RF4CE reference implementations can be downloaded free of charge from Atmel.

Other key new features for the ATmegaRFR2 family include:

• Advanced Hardware assisted Reduce Power Consumption (RPC) in listen mode
• Excellent RF link budget of 103.5dB
• Improved link efficiency and reliability using receive override
• Improved channel mask on CH25/CH26
• High data rates for up to 2Mbs
• Antenna diversity to automatically select the antenna with a stronger signal
• AES 128-bit encryption engine for high-speed communication

"New standards continue to flood the wireless market, requiring designers to find solutions with lower power consumption, better RF performance, more memory and security," said Magnus Pedersen, director of wireless solutions, Atmel Corporation. "Atmel's new ATmegaRFR2 family addresses all these requirements. Our feature-rich, single-chip wireless family enables designers to meet their demanding customer requirements while reducing their overall bill of materials, giving them more design flexibility and board space."

Availability

The ATmegaRFR2 family is shipping in production quantities now.

The ATmega256RFR2 evaluation kit is also available now in http://store.atmel.com for US $349. The evaluation kit includes two radio controller boards with an ATmega256RFR2 device and a fully functional portable wireless node, a sensor terminal board and one key remote control board enabling demo/evaluation of remote control applications.

Webinar

To learn more about the key features of Atmel's ATmega256RFR2 family, sign-up for the webinar entitled "Introducing the new ultra low power 2.4GHz SOC family" scheduled to go live on Wednesday, December 5 @ 10:00 am PT. Register now for the webinar.

More Information

Atmel ATmegaRFR2: http://www.atmel.com/products/wireless/zigbee/single-chip_solutions.aspx
Atmel Blog: http://atmelcorporation.wordpress.com
Atmel YouTube Channel: www.atmel.com/youtube
Twitter: www.atmel.com/twitter
LinkedIn: www.atmel.com/linkedin
Facebook: www.atmel.com/facebook

About Atmel
Atmel Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete system solutions focused on industrial, consumer, communications, computing and automotive markets.

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SOURCE Atmel Corporation